" Thus, a plant sucks up chemical elements and makes
flowers; a man turns them to flesh. Here is a piece of meat: eaten by a
dog it runs to tail and teeth, for a cat it makes fur and whiskers, for a
bird feathers, for a woman a lovable face. And so the test of life in a
nation would be its power of transforming its immigrants into patriots.
Only a dead nation is afraid of foreigners.
The figure has its limits, however: one cannot gulp down too large a
piece of meat. And there are things inedible--substances which no stomach
can digest. The Americans will never make Yankees of their Chinese. On
the other hand, nowhere have I found more ardent patriots than among the
Jews. Englishmen in England, Americans in America, Italians in Italy,
Frenchmen in France, and only not Russians in Russia because they are not
allowed to be, they are rabid Hungarians in Hungary; and if I have caught
any enthusiasm for Hungary it is from the lips of a young and brilliant
Jew, Vidor Emil, who piloted me about Budapest, and who, under Marmorek
Oszkar, another young Jew, built "Old Buda," perhaps the most interesting
feature of the Millennial Exhibition. This Jewish patriotism, which loves
at once Israel and some other nation, may appear curious and
contradictory; but human nature is nothing if not curious and
contradictory, and this dual affection has been aptly compared to that of
a mother for her different children.
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